Light at the end of the hotel hall

We're making progress finally!  I was able to set up a prenegotiation appointment for our [future] apartment today.  The Italians love their holidays, so they won't be working tomorrow or Friday, and it takes all day Monday and most of Tuesday to recover from the holiday, so we will be meeting with a negotiator next Wednesday.  The prenegotiation is where they call the land lord and talk about the lease, rent, and anything else.  After that, you make an appointment to sign the lease.  Once you sign the lease, you have to wait for the lease to go into effect.  When the lease goes into effect, you have to go get your utilities turned on.  As soon as your utilities are turned on, THEN you can move into the apartment.  So, progress...

The apartment we're moving into is, in my opinion, worth the wait.  I was trying not to be difficult during the looking phase, but I couldn't help wanting the best of both worlds.  We were running into a lot of "new apartment-crappy location", or "great location-crappy apartment" situations, so I thought I was going to end up settling for something I didn't really love.  I know it's just an apartment, and it's not like we were buying a house, but I had these ideas of what I would like to have, and we weren't seeing it. 

But then we got lucky!  A friend of John Ralph's is moving out of his apartment, showed it to us, and it has everything we wanted.  It's right in the middle of things downtown.  It's in a really old building, so it looks like the typical Italian building I imagined living in.  However, it's newly renovated (we're only the second people to live in it since it has been redone) so it has a nice, new, clean, contemporary, wonderful, awesome, magnificent interior.  My favorite part?  It's a toss up between the hallway of built in closets and the three windows that open up to this guy.   

It's going to be so nice to cook in a kitchen.  And wash clothes without hauling them to a laundromat.  And sleep in our own bed.  And unpack a suitcase.  And go into another room when John Ralph starts to get annoying...wait, did I say that?  Juuuust kidding!  But really...